EVERYWHERE they looked this week, the signs were there for Liverpool Football Club.

First, the resounding thud of Monday’s 3-0 drubbing at Manchester City – ­definitive proof of a seismic shift in the natural order of things.

With it, came the once-unthinkable news that Javier Mascherano had simply refused to play for a club who have won five European Cups, because he was so desperate to join Barcelona.

Next, England’s 2018 World Cup bid team gave Merseyside a wide berth when the FIFA inspectors came calling – nervous as to whether a new Anfield would ever materialise.

Then came the overblown glamour of the Champions League group-stage draw in Monte Carlo, while Liverpool were scratching out an unconvincing Europa League win in the back end of Turkey.

And all this after the latest fly-by-night potential owner, Kenny Huang, had packed up his flipchart and headed back to China.

All signs of a once-mighty institution, fallen on hard times. A club who love to remind us of their history, resembling a collection of Dickensian street urchins and chimney sweeps.

The fact City have overtaken Liverpool in the transfer market has been clear for two years, but the brutal ease of that defeat at Eastlands was chastening.

For so long, Manchester United have held Liverpool as their bitter rivals, while regarding City as an irrelevant comedy act. Now those roles are being ­reversed.

Despite the imminent arival of Raul Meireles, Mascherano’s departure is likely to prove even more critical than that of Xabi Alonso – whose exit was reckoned to be the straw that broke Rafa Benitez’s back.

Roy Hodgson has done remarkably well in keeping hold of Fernando Torres and Dirk Kuyt – at least until the January window – while Steven Gerrard was too much of a home-loving boy to ever fly the nest. But the Liverpool manager’s whining about Benitez pursuing Kuyt, after the Spaniard had promised not to raid his former club, was just hogwash.

This is the same Hodgson who vowed not to sign any of his old Fulham charges but who bid twice for Paul Konchesky and now looks to have got his man.

So-called big clubs are happy to dish it out in the transfer market but are not so keen to take it. And when you are no longer in the Champions League, you are no longer a truly big club anyway – transfer-market sharks like Inter Milan, Barcelona and Real Madrid will always be circling your key players.

Meanwhile, FIFA bods were being whisked around the shiny stadiums of London, Manchester, Newcastle and Sunderland, perhaps wondering ­whatever happened to England’s ­greatest footballing city. In the World Cup bid prospectus, they may have ­noticed something called the ‘new ­Anfi­eld’, but few would bet on it being built in eight years’ time.

Like so much else, this will depend on the arrival of a new owner to replace the keystone cowboys, Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

Somebody called Keith Harris (no not THAT one – this one’s an investment ­banker) keeps assuring us they are ­queuing six deep at the bar to buy Liverpool.

But unless you boast the wealth of Sheikh Mansour, why bother taking a punt on Liverpool, or any other ­Premier League club outside of the top four?

For instance, why would the next Randy Lerner – one of those modest billionaires – want to bother?

Lerner has clearly admitted defeat in his efforts to take Aston Villa into the Champions League, as the exit of Martin O’Neill and James Milner confirms.

Villa are now in freefall after a week so nightmarish that Freddy Kruger has been installed as the new favourite to succeed O’Neill.

“Liverpool are different,” they will protest, “we have a ‘global following”.

But flogging a few replica shirts in the Far East or the States represents ­peanuts in today’s market. Chelsea don’t even bother going on pre-season tours any more.

Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton and manager Hodgson are both astute men, but they are already beginning to bang their heads against the wall.

As an ambitious 63-year-old, Hodgson had to take the Liverpool job as soon as it became apparent that Fabio Capello was never going to do the decent thing and quit England.

Yet he went in with his eyes wide open, not accepting any assurances that Hicks and Gillett were riding out of town and knowing his shoestring Fulham team took four points off Liverpool last season, before beating them to the Europa League final.

Today, Hodgson’s men will ­probably beat West Brom 6-0, as is the fashion, because they haven’t fallen that far just yet.

But the manager will notice ­banners on the Kop, proclaiming Shankly, ­Paisley, Fagan, Dalglish and Benitez. And ­realise any club which spends so much time banging on about its history, has little to be proud about in the ­present.

IS it coincidence that all of the players to have retired from England duty in recent years – Paul Scholes, Alan Shearer, Jamie Carragher, Paul Robinson, Wes Brown and Emile Heskey – have hailed from north of the Watford Gap?

Meanwhile, Peter Crouch, a Cockney in all but birth, agrees with David Beckham (above) that he would never retire, however shabbily Fabio Capello treated him.

Chelsea’s trio of Londoners – Ashley Cole, John Terry and Frank Lampard – have all received dog’s abuse from England fans, yet they soldier on.

If this north-south divide extends to the fans, the situation is hardly going to be helped by a new FIFA edict that sees internationals played on a Friday night rather than a Saturday afternoon – meaning even fewer northerners being willing or able to make the treacherous trip to Wembley.

THE Sky Sports reporter outside St James’ Park was in sombre mood as he announced the news.

Pensioners shuddered at his tone, remembering the day the old King died.

Steven Taylor had been placed on the transfer list, he regretted to inform us.

Newcastle owner Mike Ashley would not agree to his wage demands, the reporter told us, because he wanted the club’s finances to be in tune with those of a Geordie Nation laid low by recession.

And lumps were brought to the throats of a grateful Toon Army, at the kindness and understanding of such a benevolent owner.

THE vast number of average foreign players in the Premier League is usually explained away by an argument that English players are hugely over-priced.

Manchester City’s two most influential players in their fine start to the season? Joe Hart, who cost £600,000 from Shrewsbury, and Adam Johnson, the £7million Nijinsky from Middlesbrough.

Oh yeah, you’re victims of a proper old extortion racket when you buy young native players from the Football League.

HARRY REDKNAPP is one of the very few prominent managers who rarely criticises referees and certainly never tries to influence their thinking, in the way Arsene Wenger has with yet another bitter tirade against Stoke City.

So the fact that Spurs have benefited from two major refereeing howlers this week – Stoke’s ‘goal that never was’ and Jermain Defoe’s outrageous handball against Young Boys – has a certain perverse justice about it.

SELLING James Milner is never good for a club – a course of action which propelled both Leeds and Newcastle towards oblivion.

And it hasn’t done Aston Villa any favours, judging by their week from hell. My money’s on Birmingham to finish above Villa. Unless Randy Lerner plumps for the one classy Premier League manager he might be able to tempt to Villa Park ... Alex McLeish.

I whiled away a long road journey listening to Radio Four’s Test Match Special from Lord’s on Thursday. The conversation was rich in humour, nostalgia and cricketing insight. After about two and a half hours, it dawned on me that, due to bad light and rain, not a single ball had been bowled since I’d got in the car.

COLIN MONTGOMERIE seems to have backed away from threats that he will not look kindly on players who snub European Tour events to chase big dollars in the States, when it comes to selecting his Ryder Cup wildcards tonight. Nothing to do with the fact that Padraig Harrington, Paul Casey and Luke Donald – who all ducked the final qualifying event at Gleneagles to play in the money-spinning FedEx Cup – are all clients of IMG, the same management company as Monty?

And another thing... Sorry, but I don’t care about Stuart Broad’s petulance. The kid bowls fast, scores Test centuries and beats Australians. There is nothing more to ask of an English cricketer.